Re: Question about "git commit -a"

From: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 4, 2007, 21:25 UTC
Message-ID: <200710042225.13670.andyparkins@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4d8e3fd30710040838t48bb590erbd90a8c4a1c6e932@mail.gmail.com>

On Thursday 2007, October 04, Paolo Ciarrocchi wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Hi all,
> I was just wondering why git commit doesn't default to "-a" (yes, it's
> another question that came up during a chat with a mercurial user) and
> I didn't find an answer to that.
>
> It's not a big deal but I strongly suspect that the large majority of
> the git users never user git commit without the option "-a".
>
> Am I wrong?

Yes, I think you are. I suspect that most users start out using git commit -a, because that's the workflow they were used to with their previous SCM. What happened to me was I started with

 git commit -a

Then I started adding files one at a time

 git add <file>

Now I cherry pick hunks together in coherent groups

 git add -i

Once you figure out that git lets you turn your development history from a simple snapshotter to telling the story of the project's development, you'll find you want finer and finer control over what you're committing.

Andy

-- 
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIET
andyparkins@gmail.com